Dining is back at the Sooke Harbour House

Sooke Harbour House has reopened following four years of closures, beginning when it first shut its doors several months into the COVID-19 pandemic. The hotel faced issues with ownership and a slew of legal matters which Tori Marlan covered in an award-winning investigative piece for Capital Daily. 

The property that overlooks Whiffin Spit and the Sooke Harbour will be home to two separate restaurants. Its less formal dining space, the Sooke Harbour House Bistro, opened its doors on August 4. 

The bistro will serve casual fare—including breakfast—and offers dishes like lingcod, oysters, and fish stew. It also hosts a daily happy hour from 3pm to 5pm that features dishes like grilled vegetable focaccia, buttermilk chicken and waffles, angus beef burgers, and honey glazed pork belly. 

Mouthwatering desserts also feature on the bistro’s menu, including doughnuts and a mascarpone cheesecake made with sea buckthorn, apricot, and orange. The bistro serves signature cocktails and local craft beers.  

Sooke Harbour House’s formal dining room is set to open at the end of the month. It will have an eight to 10-course daily tasting menu that honours the restaurant’s legacy of farm-to-table cooking, while introducing new elements. The menu will feature locally-sourced ingredients like seaweed, spot prawns, Dungeness crab, and wild salmon. 

The hotel and restaurant has a brand new waterfront patio that can seat up to 300 guests and which will host events. Sooke Harbour House also has a new wine cellar that boasts space for up to 20K bottles. 

The kitchen will be run by executive chef Melissa Craig, who has two decades of experience at the Bearfoot Bistro in Whistler, where she began as the executive sous-chef before earning the executive chef position. In 2008, Craig won the top chef award at the Canadian Culinary Championships. Craig began her career at Sooke Harbour House as an 18-year-old apprentice in the late 1990s.

Both Craig and her partner Andre Saint-Jacques—who is the founder of Bearfoot Bistro—are managing partners at Sooke Harbour House. 

The restaurant’s chef de cuisine is Dylan Casimiro, who has previously worked at Peter Pan Bistro in Toronto. The head pastry chef is Madeline Beaumont, who has previous experience at The Pointe Restaurant at Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino.  

(A view of Sooke Harbour House and its waterfront surroundings. Photo: @joshuajamesdominic / Instagram)

Prior to its closure in 2020, the Sooke Harbour House had an internationally renowned reputation. Its farm-to-table restaurant was considered one of Canada’s best fine-dining destinations, winning numerous awards. 

Built in the 1920s, Sooke Harbour House was purchased by Frederique and Sinclair Philip in 1979. They cultivated the restaurant’s reputation for seasonal and locally-sourced cuisine, and introduced an impressive wine program. Sooke Harbour House became a pioneer in the slow food movement and became the training ground for a number of high profile Canadian chefs, including local greats like Peter Zambri and Edward Tuson. 

Craig shared with enRoute Magazine that she hopes to reinstate Sooke Harbour House as a place where chefs come to train.  

Marlan detailed in her investigative piece how the property was shrouded by years of legal issues and controversy over ownership after the Philips agreed to sell Sooke Harbour House to Timothy Durkin in 2014.  

The property was bought by real estate investors IAG Enterprises Ltd. in 2020 and has undergone both indoor and outdoor renovations over the past four years. 

IAG Enterprises Ltd.’s Alex Watson announced last summer that Sooke Harbour House would be tentatively reopening by the end of 2023, led by Craig and Saint-Jacques. However, renovation delays pushed the opening to this year.